Sunday, October 10, 2010

Spiritual Gumbo -Chapter Two.

Healing of the feet.

At that age of about nineteen I developed corns on the bottom of my feet. I still lived in that old run down rented half a double shot gun house. I would have my routine, get up and go to a Frost Top, an old time hamburger place with the trademark of a hugh rootbeer mug on top of the roof. There I would wait for the bus every morning to go to work. The bus dropped me off still some six blocks away and I would walk the rest of way. Every morning the corns would be getting bigger and spreading. It felt after a month of that like walking on pebbles, quite irritating. Finally I couldn't take it any longer and took it upon myself to go and see a podiatrist. By this time I had developed some twenty or so small yellow callous like bumps that covered half of my right foot. After the initial examination I was schedual to have them cut out some three days later.
I told my mother about it, and she told me of a friend of hers who had this special gift of praying especially for such things. She was an old french lady who befriended my mother named Miss Edna. I didn't really believe in such things, you know I've heard all kinds of mumbo jumbo of cutting a cross into a potato, throwing it over your shoulder or burying it in the yard. My mother explained to me that there are roots in those corns and even after surgury they could grow back. And after some time of talking with my mother about it, I was convinced to go ahead and let her friend pray for me. I did it mostly just to please my mother.
Miss Edna was a widow lady who live a couple of blocks away. I walked to her house and introduced myself. She was very gracious and spoke in a heavy cajun accent and invited me into her house. She explained to me that I needed to come back three times for prayer. My mother told me that she wouldn't take any money for it, but that if I offered her five dollars as a gift then she would take it. She brought me into her bedroom. There in a corner was her little altar with pictures of Jesus and Mother Mary. She was Catholic after all. She told me that after the prayer my job was to leave the house and forget all about it, not even think about it at all. I thought to myself, well that would be pretty easy since I didn't really think too much about it all anyways. She began her prayer in a language I didn't understand, thought it might have been french but who knows what it was. I was asked only one thing as she was praying, to thank God in Jesus' name. So I spoke those words of gratitude and pretty much that was all there was to it. Of course I faithfully went back two more times and gave her the five dollars.
The first couple of mornings after I didn't see any changes. But on the third morning I woke up to discover to my amazement that all those twenty or so callous like bumps had now became holes. All the yellow was blackened as if somehow over night something came and burnt them up. They were gone! And a couple of days later those holes filled in and became smooth as my other foot.
This event is what perhaps was the one thing that lead me to search for the cause of how does things like that happen. I mean, she never touched me. Nothing was applied to my foot, I didn't have to do any potato rituals. All she did was speak to my foot. And all I did was accepted it and forget all about it.
It's things like that that you can't deny, the physical evidence was so real. It happened to me, and certainly it was not because of any amount of faith I had, for didn't even believe in such things.
One thing was sure, it was the best five dollars I've ever spent!

( I look back now and think, perhaps one of the keys to faith is that I was asked not to think about it, to forget it, which if I had considered it too much my mind would have questioned it, brought in doubt and cancelled the initial acceptance of recieving the gift, one of those spices of the spiritual life.)